The Power of Service

In preparation for my itSMF-A LEADit presentation in Canberra this year (‘Around ITIL in 30 analogies’), I was having a good look at the various analogies I use during my training and other ITSM related activities. I love the use of analogies as it is an easy way to explain complex, abstract concepts such as service management.

This was confirmed when last week I was delivering an ITIL Foundations course, using many of those analogies (sorry, you’ll have to come to the presentation to hear them all) and once more seeing their effect. In particular when explaining the concepts of service management and a service I spent a lot of time emphasising that this is not so much about ITIL, but more ‘zen’, a state of mind whereby the whole organisation is focused on delivering value to the customer, in a fixed-price, black-box, guaranteed, repeatable and managed way.

ITIL is merely a way of achieving this (and then only the Process-part of the 4 Ps). In the course we then move into the various processes and their intricacies. It is not until I reach the Service Desk function (in our course, on the last day, after all the lifecycles & processes) that I truly get to focus on the delivery of service again.

This of course as the Service Desk is the Single Point of Contact for the User and as such the visible part of the IT Service organisation. I have once before sung the praises of the Service Desk and how important it is to get it right [HERE]. But I extend this by explaining how important service (perception) is, far more important than (product) quality.

Take for instance a mobile phone (an easy to understand analogy, as most of us will have one). If you buy a mobile phone from shop X and it never fails, you would be a satisfied customer. And when it comes time to replace the phone, you may go back to shop X, but perhaps shop Y has a better offer at the time. The perfectly delivered product (meeting service targets/expectations) has not generated a particular relation\commitment with the provider.

On the other hand, if you buy a phone and it breaks, you’ll take it back to the shop. If this shop is hard to reached (closed, not answering phones, …), not friendly (‘have you touched it’, ‘it’s your fault’, …) and not good in their response (they’ll charge you, take forever to repair, …): you will never go back to this shop. A bad service has destroyed the relation.

But if, when you go back with your broken phone, the shop-assistant is most apologetic and offers you a satisfactory solution (replacement, credit, …), not only are you walking away a satisfied customer, but you will almost certainly come back to this shop for future purchases (provided of course the phone doesn’t break every month). The excellent service here has turned a negative (broken phone), into a positive: a satisfied customer with an improved relation with the provider.

Now, this part of the service is often called ‘service’ as well, although it is far more intangible, more about perception. It is the people-aspect put on top of the actual service delivery against its targets. This is things like the availability of the Service Desk, the friendliness of its staff, the response and follow-up provided.

A bad product (or service) will lose you customers, but a good one will not necessarily gain you any. People more or less expect this and you won’t get credit for something that work the way it is expected to. This is a similar issue as Problem Management faces, in particular the pro-active part: the better you do, the less people notice it!

However where bad service-perception will also lose you customers, good service will gain you. Perhaps not so much new customers, but it will cement and improve the relation with your existing ones. Hopefully improve this beyond the black and white numbers of the contract, but more into a mutually beneficial relationship whereby the IT Service Provider is truly able to provide service (and added value) to the business.

So, back to the starting point of explaining concepts: Whilst ITIL has a definition for service, and explains the function of the Service Desk … people (in my case course attendees) need to understand the true objective of a service, one that goes beyond ITIL, any of its process or functions and should be at the heart of all your staff and their actions: delivering value to your users\customers!

the ITIL Zealot
April 2013

Is your Service Desk a SPOC or a SPOF?

One of ITIL’s benefits is identified as the ‘one language’ to be spoken within IT; and often people indicate this is an objective at the start of a course (I want to learn what this ITIL is I keep hearing about) or the benefit obtained at the end (now I know what the others are talking about). ITIL does introduce a lot of definitions (have a look at the full glossary-of-terms: 55 pages !) and as a good methodology should , it also contains a lot of acronyms. So let’s start with explaining the ones I’ve used in the title:

•    SPOC = Single Point of Contact
•    SPOF = Single Point of Failure

The Service Desk is supposed to be the Single-Point-of-Contact for Users on a day-by-day basic (i.e. for incidents and service requests). Although mistakenly (IMHO, another acronym although not ITIL-specific) the book reference its primary aim not so much to be a SPOC but to restore normal service to users (which is the incident management objective and only part of the service desk’s activities).

The reason is simply (and mostly well-understood and reasonably implemented in your average organisation): instead of letting the Users having to hunt around and find someone in IT who can help him, they can contact the service desk for anything and everything. From there the correct service process and function will be engaged. As such it is not only the single, but also the FIRST point of contact and this makes it very important, if not critical in the perception of service.

Imagine company A with you-beaut IT: the latest-and-greatest in desktops, the latest-and-smallest in laptops, massive fully-redundant internet-pipes ... but no service desk to speak of. When something goes wrong you, the user, has to find an IT person and when you finally do, you’ll get a response like ‘yeah, what do you want ... you touched it didn’t you? ... I don’t have time for that ... I’ll look at it this afternoon, maybe, if I feel like it!’

Company B on the other hand has IT equipment that is a bit longer in the tooth, not as powerful or modern. It does break (occasionally) but if it does you can call the service desk. There your phone-call gets answered within 30 seconds by a friendly voice who tell you that ‘we are aware there are currently some issues with the e-mail service and according to the latest information we’ve received it should be fixed in the next 15 minutes’ (and it is: say what you do – do what you say).

Now, I reckon that when it comes to user satisfaction, company B is going to give company A a run for its money. Not because their IT is better, but their service is (or at least their service desk). This is the role that the service desk plays: in the perception of the value of a service. Hence we need to make sure it is resourced properly and that means not necessarily with junior technicians (who have to do a tour-of-duty on the service desk before they’re allowed to touch a server or a piece of network equipment).

After all, it is the service desk operator which needs to differentiate between user A and user B calling to tell them their e-mail is not working. On the face of it two similar incidents, but with user A screaming down the phone that they are a manager, that it is a disgrace and that they demand someone to fix it ... right now! However, user A doesn’t actually need e-mail that much for their work (it could easily be -temporarily- replaced with phone-calls, faxes or face-to-faces). 

This in contrast to user B, who addresses the service desk a lot politer, almost apologetic for the fact that email is not working and hope they haven’t caused any trouble. User B actually performs their tasks using e-mail (for instance receiving orders from clients).

The service desk not only needs the communication skills to deal with the angry user A, but also the business-skills to understand the relative impact & urgency of both user, the service-knowledge (including SLA and service catalogue) to determine how to respond to this. Any technical skills might help in the initial diagnosis, but so does the knowledge\known error database.

Without these skills and the true service attitude (always remember that without IT most organisations would still exist, but without those organisations most of us wouldn’t have a job!) your service desk may still be a SPOC, but it might very well also be a SPOF. 

OK, perhaps not a single point of failure but certainly the first, visible one. And you only get one chance to make a first impression, and those first impressions are normally what tips the favour in any satisfaction survey.

the ITIL Zealot
July  2012

IT, Customer and User – A Bermuda Triangle

ITIL has a long history of being less than concise, sometimes downright ambiguous. ITIL ‘dinosaurs’ like myself my fondly remember the sleep inducing ITIL v1 books mainly due to its sometimes incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo and its apparent lack of structure, especially across the books. Or how about the v2 books where the chapter definition of a Release, did not reflect the one in the glossary of terms in the back?

Although v3 and 2011 are a lot better there is still some ambiguity and\or unclarity the use of terms and definitions, especially across the books. Personally for instance I find it a shame that the terms ‘utility’ and ‘warranty’ aren’t used outside the Strategy book (for impact\urgency classification, testing & evaluation, KPIs …).

I often say that certain sections in the book (and Service Strategy would be the main example of this) require you to read those two or three or more times. Every time you read it you’ll get a better understanding and develop a better ‘view’ of how it fits with the rest of ITIL. Thus eventually you build your own understanding or model of ITIL and its processes. Another good explanation is the old analogy of the ITIL processes as tectonic plates: they move, shift, bump and overlap each other. It is up to you to define the boundary between them (for instance between Demand Management and Business Capacity Management, Business Relationship Management and Service Level Management, Service Improvement Programs and CSI, Change Management and Transition Planning & Support, …).

One of the enduring ‘misunderstandings’ is that of Customer vs. User. The definition is simple enough though. A Customer is someone (i.e. an individual) who represents the business (i.e. a group, team, function, unit). On behalf of the business they will make decisions (in Service Level Management, in Change Management, …), but they will need to pay for those decisions. In other word a Customer is a decision-making, budget-holder.

The User by contrast is someone who uses the IT (Service). As such they only represent themselves and do not specifically make decisions or pay for those. Hence the difference between Request Fulfilment and Change Management. Request Fulfilment deals with predetermined, pre-costed, standard requests from the User, whereas anything new, different or unknown has to go through Change Management (and the CAB and most likely the Customer).

Roughly speaking Operations deals with Users (as it is business-as-usual and only limited decision-making is required, within specific parameter), whereas Strategy\Design\Transition involves the Customer for definition and decision-making (although the User will need to be involved, if only for someone to represent their interests and points-of-view).

Note though that most Customers will also be Users, as they normally will have a desktop\laptop\mobile phone or other IT device that they use. Even IT staff can be considered Users as they are also using IT devices and services. 

So, the Customer will decide (through Service Level Requirements) that they want an e-mail service with specific utility, for 5 days-a-week, at 99.9% availability, with a capacity for 1,500 users, storage for 7 years (i.e. warranty) etc. etc. Through the service level negotiations this will be agreed, with the IT Service Provider in an SLA, including costs and charges. Once Design and Transition are completed, the IT Service Provider will now deliver this service to the Users and they can use it (as defined by the Customer).

Now, if there is something wrong with the service (i.e. unavailable, no storage-space …) the user should notify the IT provider, through the Service Desk (incident management or request fulfilment, …). But if the Users want something which is outside the current agreed service, they should not notify (or rather as it is in most cases: complain) to IT, but instead bring this to the attention of the Customer, who can then negotiate the service change with the IT provider.

And here is where the Bermuda Triangle analogy comes from, as this line of communication is often missing. If Users do not directly communicate with the Customer (or vice versa) that IT gets stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one had they have to deliver the agreed (with the Customer) service (often cut down on cost) but have to live up to the expectation of the Users (based on phenomenal quality).

Therefore it is in the IT provider’s interest to establish the lines of communication between Customer and Users. This can be done by performing User Satisfaction Surveys (and reporting this to the Customer), creating User Focal Groups (as part of Design), routinely performing User Acceptance Testing (in Transition) and involving the User in CAB, Post-Implementation-Reviews and CSI.

Ultimately we all want the same thing (service that deliver value to the business), but sometimes we not only approach it from different angle, but from different planets.

the ITIL Zealot